Wednesday, October 29, 2003

DENVER -- Two years after a woman alleged she was gang-raped by University of Colorado football players and recruits, court documents suggest the men escaped charges because prosecutors thought they had "third party consent" to have sex with the drunken, sleeping woman.

The alleged assault by several players and recruits took place at an off-campus party during a "recruiting weekend" intended to persuade high school players to join the team.

Although prosecutors believed the woman's account, they decided against filing charges because the men had been promised sex by a player and a student who organized the party, according to a lawsuit filed against the university by the woman.

"They had been built up by the players to believe that the situation they were going into was specifically to provide them with sex," Boulder County District Attorney Mary Keenan said in a sworn statement included in a court filing Monday.

"Their mind-set coming into it was that it was consensual because they had been told it had been set up for that very purpose, and that's what was going to happen," Keenan's statement said.